---
He told her that he expected to have to argue with her about stubbornness and coming back right away, and promise to stay floating right there by Seb's Door until she came back out -- as a sort of other-risk for him if she stayed any longer than those few seconds, giving her a reason to come back straightaway, just in case there were any more 'broken Bills' about, somewhere, farther away.
He told her that he expected a non-zero chance of her trying to tell him that she didn't need to check. He told her that he might have to push her into deciding how sure she was about that Door or not -- to go in there alone, on her own, by herself. And he told her that he wouldn't let her go in any Door that she wasn't already absolutely sure was Seb's, but also wouldn't let her feel comfortable going back in her own Door without at least making sure that she knew exactly which Door was Seb's.
"But you won't come in with me when I check?" Miz asked him, frowning at him. He shook his head once. "Why?"
"Seb didn't invite me," Bill told her simply.
Miz eyed him. That sounded super-suspicious to her. "The ReverseBill didn't invite you, but you went in there…"
"That Bill didn't know me," Bill brushed off. "And you invited me to go exploring places with you."
Miz gave her big brother another look, because she was pretty sure that Bill still would've insisted on coming along even if she'd tried to tell him no.
"I care more about you, my sister, than some other Bill that I don't know," Bill told her succinctly. "And I do know Seb. Seb met me and didn't invite me over to come visit," Bill told her. "That isn't a 'yes, I want you in my dimensional set with me, please'; it's the opposite."
"...What else?" Miz asked him, because she doubted her very plan-ny big brother would've just stopped at that.
And then Miz blinked as Bill told her what he'd expected she'd need to know next -- and began to demonstrate (via something of a few pantomimed motions, along with a rather thorough but brief accompanying explanation) what he'd thought of as an 'escape hatch' for her, even in the event that a 'broken Bill' might be on the other side of the Door of her home 'set, waiting. It basically involved moving Seb's Door over to be right behind hers, in a special but really very simple kind of way.
Bill had noticed, and then noted -- from everything that he'd seen (and Seen) thus far with her Door and what she'd shown both him and Stanley -- that the 'broken Bills' couldn't get through the Doors on their own -- not just the locks, but the actual Doors themselves. He shared his theory with her that she could probably materialize the Door, then slam it open into the 'broken Bill' to shove it away from her -- and then slip her way out quickly, closing it behind her, without getting touched, reach, or hurt (and then consumed) by it. With even a little breathing room, she could then dash -- if not simply slide and rotate herself -- right around the edge of the doorframe, and pull open Seb's Door immediately, slamming it shut it behind her.
All she would need to do, to do that, would be to move Seb's Door behind hers, turn it upside down so that both the doorknobs were at the same edge, and then 'stick' it in place so that it wouldn't go anywhere else in the meantime.
And the reason the whole thing would work was because Miz could move her own Doors around however she wanted, and the Doors only opened one way. Bill noted that aloud to her outright. The 'hinges' and 'doorframes' only let them open the one way, in the one direction. The 'backs' of the Doors might as well be completely immovable and useless, in terms of getting anyplace freely. They didn't even have any 'doorknobs' on them; the backs of the Doors were almost completely smooth surfaces.
It made her want to smack her forehead, with how stupidly simple it was. She didn't say that out loud to him though, just like she hadn't said anything about any of his younger-self's childlike-scribble 'hats' made of light.
She also had to fight down a laugh when Bill didn't stop there. He apparently had a plan for how she could capture 'broken Bills' in here, too. And the way he described it was not only cute, it was just as stupidly simple as the 'escape hatch' idea that he'd had.
He didn't pantimome anything this time, demonstrating it for her himself; he actually drew out the wireframes and 'animated' them for her, in pretty much the same way that he'd visually drawn those 'hats' of his out of light.
Miz looked on and watched as he drew six doors in the air, and an odd sort of 'tangle' to represent a 'broken Bill'. Bill then enclosed the 'broken Bill' in the middle of a box, using four 'Doors' to surround it on all sides in a square-shape, looking down on it from above… and then really finish enclosing it on all sides by adding a 'top' and 'bottom' to the box -- covering them by using those last two odd-out 'Doors', too.
And then Miz blinked as Bill shifted the sides past each other, further and further, slowly shrinking the space in the middle, until it started to look more like an open-centered Brigid's cross than a box anymore. It was still just as tall as ever… but it seemed a little more contained now, with all the sides of every Door overlapping each other a bit.
(Miz was reminded of those matchstick puzzles. Also, if she did manage to capture a broken Bill with the Doors, she could technically move them around by moving said Doors while keeping the 'cage' functional.)
And apparently she and Bill were on the same wavelength on this one, because the very next thing Bill did after that was begin to explain his ideas for how and why such a trap would work. How having the doorknobs towards the 'broken Bill' would make it not want to escape, but rather probably go towards it. How shifting the edges in that way past the hinges, not making it a 'box' where all the outer edges were touching and fully-flush, would make it so the Doors couldn't be opened from inside that boxed-in area, even if the 'broken Bill' would otherwise somehow be able to manage it, if given enough time, because the Doors slammed open outwards into her Dreamscape, rather than opening into the 'set that they gave entry in upon -- they wouldn't be able to open 'into' the inside 'trap' area, with the box arrangement blocking the hinges from moving...
...and then Bill moved straight on to what Miz had been thinking of: How he thought the backsides of the Doors -- without 'doorknobs' on them, and the 'hinges' being the wrong way around to even allow that sort of motion -- could be set up and used to 'face' and trap a 'broken Bill' for longer-term viewing and 'storage', if necessary, instead. (HAH!) How he thought Miz could set up a second 'box' without 'doorknobs' showing, or only one showing, and let the 'broken Bill' maneuver its way into that one instead. How he thought she could swap out one 'Door' with another along one single side at a time, without letting anything inside get free, with how she could potentially maneuver the Doors around there.
"You'll want to practice before you do it," Bill told her, as he finished visually showing her the examples of all the motions that he'd thought through, and Miz nodded, then blinked as he handed her the little lightshow of eight doors that he'd just shown her.
"You've been thinking a lot about this," Miz noted (it wasn't like she hadn't noticed how he had trouble figuring out -- literally, figuring out -- certain kinds of three-dimensional movements in his body sometimes), and Bill nodded once.
"Don't forget to look in EVERY direction for them, outside your outer-sides of yourself," Bill told her next, pointing a finger outwards and gesturing around them in a circle as he slowly rotated… and then started moving his arm to point both downwards and then upwards. "These Doors may mostly be in-a-line with each other, around here," he said, and they were -- pretty much all facing the same way, in the same orientation, and at the same 'floor' level with each other -- "But that doesn't mean that some of them might not think in all-other directions just as easily. That one Bill was… always human," Bill noted with a bit of a wince, if not a stifled shudder. "There may be other three-dimensional Bills, from higher-dimensional spaces, in other places that we haven't gone to and Seen yet." And he looked anything but happy at the idea.
Miz sighed at her brother's reaction to the very idea of that, and put away the little practice 'Door set' for now, rewinding and flattening it out in much the same way that she'd done with the hat that Bill had given her. She knew that he didn't think of her that way, and he didn't seem to… look down on her for being human a long time ago, or for wanting to be human again still? But...
Miz shook those (worrying) thoughts away from herself, and then she reached out to grip Seb's Door. And then stretched her other hand out in the direction she felt her own. This was her Dreamscape, she could do whatever. Instead of moving Seb's Door away from his cluster toward her own Door completely, she instead pulled his Door a little ways away from his section, and then pulled her own Door towards herself from where it had been. Then, after a quick glance at her brother, a third arm stretched out to get his door as well.
"Is this ok? Having all three of us close together?" she asked, feeling a little nervous for moving her brother's door without asking.
"This is your Dreamscape," he told her. "I'm not going to try moving anything unless you want me to." (Not least of which because Stanley hadn't given him full access to his powers for this impromptu trip, so he didn't have nearly as much leeway with his powers and abilities right now as he had when last they'd been in here together before.) "If you want to move something, you move it. Yes?"
Miz flickered orange for a second. "I like the idea of you being close by. So I can visit you easier."
Bill smiled slightly at that, but it faded again quickly.
"Check Seb's dimension first, now," he told her, crossing his arms again. "You can decide whether it will be easier to use his Door instead of mine for now, as an escape hatch." He paused for a moment. "I will stay right here and not-move while you do it."
"Okaaaay~" Miz huffed before giggling. Being doted on in this way was… interesting. She went toward Seb's Door and glanced back at her human-looking but not at all human and never had been brother before she eye-smiled. "Be back in a few secs."
Bill nodded once, with no expression on his face.
But when she reached out her hand for the doorknob to the Door, she had a flash of anxiety. Bill had pretty much refused to come into Seb's dimension with her, and… he'd talked about moving Doors and stuff, and how to keep them closed. He'd said he wasn't going to trap her, but what if--
--what if he moves another Door in front of this one and I can't get back out? What if he locks it on me somehow? What if--
No. She… was… going to trust him.
He was her brother, and he'd promised he wasn't going to trap her anywhere, ever.
And then Miz was gone, in and through the Door.
And Bill counted.
One second.
Two.
Three.
He floated slightly forward towards the Doorway, his hands 'clenching' in-place 'against' (but not against) his purely Mental form...
---
Miz was quick this time. Making sure to shrink down super-small the instant she was through, so as not to alert the Bill here if she was wrong and it wasn't Seb.
...but it WAS Seb! And he was… at… a fashion show? With a cheering crowd around the runway?! And cameras flashing everywhere?
...he got a fashion show?! That must be what this was! Seb became a fashion designer for real! That was amazing!
Reassured that this WAS her Seb, Miz turned and slipped back through and out the Door without the former demon even noticing she was there.
It was only a few seconds.
---
...and Miz was out and through the other side, back in her own true Dreamscape again.
...And Bill was a little bit closer to the Door than he had been when she'd gone inside of it.
"...Brother?" she asked him slowly. "You…"
"Yes," Bill said. "I… moved. A little," he said next. "I didn't touch it. Or anything."
He sounded a little guilty, though.
Miz felt frustrated. "Were you going to try and trap me in there?" she demanded of him.
"I didn't," Bill said.
"Brother..." Miz said, hands on her hip-equivalents.
And Bill looked away from her then, looking very frustrated.
"I wanted to, but I didn't do it!" he told her hotly. "I want you with me more. Trapping you isn't fine. I'm not going to do that. Not even to make sure that you're safe," he said, but Miz suddenly realized that it sounded a lot less like Bill was trying to convince Miz of this, and a lot more like he was almost trying to...
...It sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't going to do it. To trap her, and keep her forever with him, whether she wanted him to or not.
And Miz looked at him. Really, really looked at him, for a long few moments.
He'd always seemed really super in-control to her, ever since she'd met him. In control of himself, in control of almost every situation he was in. Maybe he still had trouble physically interacting with things sometimes, and he definitely didn't have his own Zodiac Ten figured out for how to get along with them all yet, but he always seemed to have a plan for absolutely everything, to make sure that it was all going to be going his way. --Maybe he really did love chaos, and throwing sanity out the window sometimes, but… to Miz, he'd always seemed really in control of himself. What he was going to do.
This was the first time she'd actually seen him struggle with anything like a choice, really. Struggle with making a choice and a decision, and then struggle even more with following through on it, on something he'd said that he'd do.
And, well… she could understand that, especially given the circumstances. Trying to balance the needs of two siblings could be really hard, sometimes. But… how could she reassure him? How could she help him understand that she didn't want to leave him either?
"--Even if I really want to," Bill told her, "I don't want to. --I'm trying," he told her, looking back at her. "I want you to stay with me. I want you to want to stay with me," he told her, "And I want you to stay." And he knew that they both knew that, really, all three of those things were different.
"And I want to stay with you too." Miz told him. "I don't want to leave either. But there are more things I want, too. I want to see my friends again. I want to see my children again." She sighed. "I want to do that. Just as much as I want to be with you."
"I know," Bill told her. "I know that! I don't want to stop you, I just-- I want to stop you, but I don't, because stopping you is worse--" ('unless you die and don't come back' he thought -- but he couldn't let himself think that there was any real possibility of that ever happening, he had to trust that she wouldn't let that happen to herself again and would call and come to him for help if she thought about doing it, or anyone tried to do it to her; if he couldn't believe that, then he'd NEVER be able to let himself let her go -- and he tightened his arms around his Self, hands in to keep himself from even be able to try to even start to grab her)
"--but--" He looked even more agitated, actually looking almost human for once, in Miz's eyes, the way his shoulders came up, the way he was holding himself. "Liam--" He clamped down on his lips quickly, shuddering slightly, then shook him head and said, "He never went anywhere. It's hard," he told her, looking up at her again. "--It's hard." And it finally occurred to Miz that what her brother was doing right now? Was something her brother had never really had to think about before, let alone try to follow through on. This was something completely new for him, and… he really didn't know how to handle it, did he?
"You're just worried. And scared." Miz said to him, explained for him, trying to help him understand himself. "You're afraid I won't come back, that I wouldn't be able to. Or that something bad would happen to me once I Ieave your sight." And she thought of what she could do to make him feel better about this.
"--I'm 'afraid' that you're going to get lonely again and that lizard of yours is going to talk you into killing yourself forever instead of taking that escape hatch immediately to get away from it and coming to ME," Bill hissed out at her rather angrily, but Miz didn't have to be a trained psychologist to know that he was projecting at least a little, because it was definitely easier for him to be angry at somebody else about everything than for him to… think that he might not be there for her when she needed him.
"...Back when I was human," Miz admitted softly, "My sister moved out for college. And… she never moved back in. She left our parents house the first chance she got and never looked back." She fiddled with her hands. "And part of me felt really sad that she left. I understood why she did that, but it still hurt that she left me and our other sister behind. I… know she couldn't have taken us with her, but it was still hard to just… not have her there anymore." Miz wasn't exactly sure where she was going with this, but it was still...
"And I didn't get to see her very much anymore. But I still went to visit when I could. It was hard to find the time or the means." Miz sighed. "And that sucked. But, here and now," she gestured around them. "I can come and go as I want. And no one, not Dad, not Time Baby, not even my own fucking depression, is going to stop me from coming to see you again." Miz stared at Bill firmly. "I love you," she told him. "And so long as I do, I won't hurt you by leaving you alone. So I'm not going to die and leave you. And I won't ever stop loving you either." She paused to let that sink in. "That's what I've decided. On how I feel. How I WANT to feel."
And Bill paused, seeming to hang in the air for a very long frozen moment.
And in response to this declaration of love from his sister, Bill said to her: "Then you'd better headband that stupid lizard of yours immediately once you get back, so it can't mess around with your 'Soul' and make you do anything like that, even if it wanted to." His eyes bored into her own, and boy did he look grim. "Or headband yourself away from him straightaway, so that he can't get at you that way, instead." He straightened slightly in place. "I don't want it, or anyone else, pushing around your Mind or your Heart or your Soul, telling you what you should think or feel or be, anymore ever again. You know how to do that now, so use it," Bill told her firmly, but he himself seemed to be vibrating slightly in place.
...Ah. Well. --Her brother, practical and eye-on-the-prize as ever. ...Miz guessed this was his big brother super-overprotective-right-now way of saying, 'I don't want you to get hurt again' and 'I love you, too'.
"I'm not going to die and leave you, either," Bill told her next, to her slight surprise, because she'd thought he was done, that that was all he was going to say to her then. "No takebacks. I meant it, and I mean it, and you meant it, and you mean it. So."
Miz blinked as she remembered that, well, that was almost exactly how they'd decided to become brother and sister to begin with; they'd done that with almost the exact same phrasing. And if her brother really was offering what he just had... "So… I guess…" she rubbed her arm. "I guess, you should teach me how to break my bond with dad first. That… would probably help." She didn't want to break her bond, but… If it would help make her brother feel even just a little bit better about her 'homelife' situation...
Bill let out a slight huff. "'Breaking a 'bond' is about as useful as trying to lock you into, or out of, a dimensional set," he told her, looking away from her for a moment. "There are always ways around it, and you have to lock and block every way that something like that can be done." He glanced back at her. "I showed you my own way of getting back here, that was sort of like using the Doors, and it worked for you," he told her slowly, and she internally winced slightly -- she had hoped he hadn't thought things through that quite that far…
...but if he had, then how early had he started thinking about forcing her to stay, and trying to tell himself not to do it? Had he actually wanted her to try out his own method of doing that, to give her a second way to do it and get her thinking about the possibilities of other ways of doing that, in order to actually make it harder on himself to lock her into any given 'set -- maybe even impossible for him to think that he might actually be able to get away with pulling that off, once he'd told her that? --Had he actively and consciously self-sabotaged himself on purpose by doing that, to try and keep himself from being able to do that to her later, knowing full well exactly what he was doing -- and what the later consequences for him would be -- when he was doing it?
Uwu...
"'Bonds' can reform," he told her. "Breaking them is easy, not simple. Backlash is a thing, and can go either -- or both -- ways; you can influence the way in which the backlash hits, and who, and how hard." Oh man, from the way he was saying this, it sounded like these were just the basics; she was used to how Bill usually explained things to her, now. "Remember when I told you about Karma?" Miz didn't even get a chance to grimace, let alone nod, before he told her, "It's a little like that, except the person-or-thing you had those bonds with can and usually will keep trying to reform those bonds with you and drag you back in, in all sorts of different and very not-fun ways."
"Right. Got it." Miz nodded. So she'd have to be careful with that. And fortify her defenses.
"Sometimes," and Bill got a cautious look, "Sometimes, it is easier to let the bond stay in place, but tie it up in a knot even tighter, along the bonding-'string'. --Make it unable to change, and then block it with a blockage. Make it fluid and shift over all of your surfaces, but not actually get any traction; let it rise to the surface, never let it get any deeper. That way," he told her, "You always know where it is. You keep it, but on YOUR terms. --I DON'T recommend doing that, keeping it is usually worse," he told her, "Except when the reforming bond might dig in hooks EVEN DEEPER, to a place you can't reach, or one that would cause even-worse damage if you tried to rip it out directly. --Layering helps," Bill told her. "You can shift things around, slowly move them out and further-out. The idea of relationships works in the same way," he told her. "Some are grabby; some require maintenance; some will disengage on their own if you leave them alone and refuse to communicate with them long enough -- your lizard doesn't sound like that one, though," Bill told her. "It sounds like the hooks-and-grabby type."
Miz tilted a little. "Ehh… Ax is too lazy to put that much effort into anything." But… would he?
"Miz," Bill said, about as patiently as he could on the subject (which admittedly, wasn't very). "Little sister. That lizard is holding on to your Zodiac prophecy. It has a point of leverage over you, for something that you want. It's a type of 'bond'," he told her. "And it is refusing to give that up."
"...oh." Hadn't thought of that.
"And, if what it ends up writing is anything like my prophesy," Bill continued, "Then it will add in that part near the end about 'calling on it' to 'shirk the blame'. --Which is another hook to bring you back in and back to it," he noted, quite clearly, while looking her straight in the eye.
"Okay, headband it is. Got it." Miz nodded. Though she would still talk to her dad about it. Despite brother's paranoia, she just… couldn't bring herself to believe Ax would have anything malicious planned for her.
"A general 'no-touch' layer, to prevent anyone or anything touching your Soul without a lot of effort and you noticing, is one good first line of defense," Bill told her. "Something to stall anything from sinking in, giving you enough time to do something about it. --Next defense would be something that would let you shift any 'bond' or 'connection' you have on or in you to the headband directly; let it take the first hit if it tries anything. Switch and shift-around and shunt -- we've talked about sympathetic magic and stand-ins; the basic base-line concept is similar," he told her, giving her the best ideas he could think of at the moment. He'd only gotten so far before, and most things in his own 'set just didn't attack the 'Soul' directly -- not the way that his sister had ever talked about it, that is. And he himself had only really started getting a real sense for what she'd meant when she had done what she'd done and explained with those 'Soulless' constructs in the Reverse!Flatland 'set. To Bill, this was all still very bleeding-edge new.
Miz was taking all the mental notes she could. Her power pulsed out, fortifying her mental self, taking her brother's words as pointers for setting the parameters. It left her Self feeling a little tingly before it settled in and down. "Kinda… like this?"
"Good," Bill told her, upon looking her over. "Not how I would do it, but good. --My way would not fit you well," he noted, "Our energy flows are different, and you don't do any encryption." He frowned a bit. "I didn't explain my own bricks and outer-structure, did I," he noted, realizing something as he looked her over again.
"Encrypting my Self would scramble my thoughts worse than they are already. I'd be even more scatterbrained." Miz grumbled.
"Try thinking in a different, made-up language that nobody else knows, then," Bill told her. "That can be a first step towards the idea of encryption. If they can read you, at least they can't understand what they're reading, then. Mostly. Patterns are a thing, still." It wasn't the same as what he did, but then, that probably wouldn't work well for her, either. "--You said that the layers feel constraining before, yes? Not comfortable? Because you have to hold them? The way that you have to hold them?"
"Yeah, like I didn't have room to just spread out when I want." Miz liked stretching, reaching out and shifting and changing as she liked.
"You are used to vessels, not exoskeletons that are bigger on the inside, with as many layers as you want and need to have to provide the necessary protection needed for and from all external threats," Bill noted. "And your bricks are also not the same as mine," he told her. He hadn't really realized it before, but seeing (and Seeing) her for this long outside of any constraining anything... "I use my bricks like a constraining structure to hold me in-and-up a bit, as well as build off of. --Not constraining," he grimaced, "More like… a chair? I sit almost all of myself inside it… but not fully," he noted. "Hats do not surround the whole head; human clothing has holes in it. A body can 'sit' in it, clothing and accessories, if they are made in a way that supports the body they were made for." He frowned for a moment. "Climbing harness, built-and-stitched into clothes?" he tried, casting about for ideas. "My bricks are an internal-external support structure. I can lean against parts of myself. Physical muscle and tendons rest on bones; I rest up-and-against my 'outer' bricks and brick-lines; they are solid. I don't usually change them," he told her. "See?" And he turned about in place.
Miz blinked. Because her brother most certainly did not look like a triangle just then, let alone have any 'brick pattern' on him, but...
...she could see the anchor standing out fully now, as he turned. It didn't look like a symbol on his back when he was like this; instead, it seemed to stay under the 'skin' and run through him, to curl down and into his center and seem to almost vanish there, to trace back to...
...but that wasn't the only thing that she saw. Some of the lines of energy of him seemed to pulse a little bit stronger against the others now, as if he was leaning against things, particular parts of his thoughts and thought- and energy-patterns inside him, as he 'showed off', trying to show her what he meant. She hadn't really caught it before, with the whole 'encryption' thing he had going on -- especially since the bunches of strands she was Looking at now seemed to shift a bit over time as he went, too -- but… there were always some of them there, and sort of acting as some internal something for him, even if she couldn't really read or See every part of him completely, to see exactly what they were actually doing for him. Every last part of him still seemed to be fuzzed out a bit (a lot), even when she still tried to See him. (She guessed it was because he was still pretty self-contained and still not letting much of his sense-able energy, thought, or emotion escape out to her past his own 'surface boundaries'. ...He was probably also still worried about influencing her too much, if she -- or anyone else -- got a really good look at him; he'd been worried before what that might do to her.) But...
"I'll work on it. I think I get what you mean." She also took this chance to search inside herself for her bond to Ax. It wasn't very hard to find once she actually tried looking for it. She was surprised to note that the bond originated from her. She had been the one to make it originally. Huh. Weird.
And when she glanced up at Bill right afterwards, still in somewhat the same mindset in order to see that kind of thing, a bond between someone and an Axolotl...
"Brother! You have a bond to your Axolotl, too!" Miz exclaimed. Because she could See it. Especially since she'd Seen his AXOLOTL in person. It was clear when one knew where to look.
And, oddly enough, Bill didn't deny it. He just sort-of grimaced at it being brought up and tried to wave it off to her, as he stopped 'showing off' and rotating in place.
"Brother…" Miz pressed him, because she really wanted an explanation for that one.
"It's fine," he told her as he reoriented himself again towards her, "I'm fine," but he was still grimacing over it.
Miz didn't have an eyebrow but she drew one along her top corner just so she could raise it, to make it clear she was being skeptical.
Bill sighed. "...The easiest way for me to take over everything later is probably to trace this connection back to it," he made an odd gesture, "And then trace every other connection it has to and from it going outwards even-further, in order to pick up anything and everything that it would otherwise DROP once I kill it," Bill told her, in almost muted tones, as he hovered there in front of her. "Had to keep something in place to lean on the prophecy, anyway." Though he left out the part where he hadn't had any real connection to the stupid thing in the first place before that, for whatever reason. (...probably to do with whatever utterly stupid kind of thing it was trying to use him as an experiment for; his hypothesis hadn't changed yet on that front.) He'd had to forge one himself to it, in order to even get that Prophecy, as a start. And what it had taken to do that--
"Well, as long as you're careful." Miz told him.
"HA!" Bill said, and that got a grin out of him. Miz couldn't understand why, suddenly, he looked so much more relaxed. "'Free will' has always been a joke, and a punchline," he told her. "So they keep on lining up the punches for it; so what. Doesn't mean I can't still make everything better until it's the broken-unbroken way it SHOULD BE and should-have-been from the start," he told her.
"Pretty sure Free Will in my dimension works differently too. It felt different, when I was up there with your AXOLOTL."
"Everything feels and actually-is different there, in existential actuality, all the way that high up," Bill told her. "That's why I have to be careful. That's why I don't change; why I refuse to." He shrugged. "Otherwise, what's the point? I go up there, change, and then don't want the same things at all anymore? --I'm not that stupid," he told her. "I'm not going to make that kind of mistake."
"It didn't feel like that with my Ax." Miz mused, more to herself than to Bill.
"Probably because you're a 'pillar'," Bill told her. "You're already up at the tip-of-the-top of any and every level that's ever existed there, from where you are over there, already. But the way moving up-in-and-through all the levels is-and-works-and-happens in my 'set, all goes very differently than the way it goes in yours, I think."
"Oh right. Sometimes I forget I'm actually kinda important in my world…"
Bill let out a soft short chitter, then nodded. "And the structure is completely different there, too. So the mappings all work out differently, also. --So why would anything feel the same, if nothing is in the same place, or made of any of all of the same things?" he asked her rhetorically.
"True. Well, let's see how this works…" and she unhooked her bond, let it unravel slowly. She shuddered. "Oh this feels weird. Like… being submerged in bubbly soda or something." She shuddered again.
"Grab onto the end of it; don't let go of it completely!" Bill warned her very quickly, almost reaching for it himself as it nearly started to slide away from her. It would be VERY bad, he suspected, if she let go of it completely, and gave that lizard of hers any warning, of what she was trying to do...
"Got it." She did. "So… do I stick this somewhere?" The end of the bond was very… fluid feeling. Like running her fingers through silky wet sand underwater.
"Make a patch for it, to stitch-and-stick it into-onto?" Bill said after a long moment, his mind going to Shooting Star because of his need for an analogy, and her 'craft'-iness of how she knew how to make clothing articles that were more physical than mental, for him to be able to continue on explaining things via his earlier analogy. "One you can rip off of yourself if you need to? Like a headband, like a piece-of-a-layer, like a..." Bill was clearly struggling for comparisons at this point.
"Stickers!" Miz cheered as she plastered the mental equivalent of a sticky image of a pork chop with googly eyes onto the end and stuck it to the wall inside herself.
Bill blinked. --Not what he would've gone with, but Miz was a bit different than he was in how she worked things, and how she made things work, and what worked best for her, and if it worked? Well, he'd have no complaints! And as for the idea that she'd come up with…
...Hm. Miz had seemed to get along with Shooting Star better than the rest. He'd have to remember at a higher priority level from now on, that both of them liked stickers...
Miz hummed. "Well I have my fortifications and my stickers. Should I get some bubble wrap too?" she teased, thinking of what he'd said about the 'no-touch layer'. "At what point would it be safe for me to go home?"
"If it works, then use it," Bill told her of the bubble wrap, very practically. As for his sister going home… "It isn't safe," he told her. "But you're going to go back to your home 'set anyway, and I'm not stopping you." He looked about as (un)happy as ever about that, but at least he looked a little (maybe slightly) less tense about it now than he had been before.
Miz shrugged and spread bubble wrap around her Mindscape anyway. They'd be fun to pop if she got bored. "So…" She looked up at Bill and huffed. "I'm going to be okay. I'm going to he careful."
"Don't tie yourself up in knots over anything," Bill told her. "If anything, just try for braids, instead." (He actually meant it partially in reference to her 'snarled' and 'tangled' energy, but he also meant it for some of her thought processes and stressful-decisions as well.) "You can always send me things through your blog," he reminded her.
"I know. I just don't want you to stress out worrying over me." She sighed.
"I will stress more later, when we finally talk again, once we talk again and I know that you did not talk to me when you could have, if you don't send me things when you could have. I promise," he told her primly, and it sounded almost like some kind of a threat. ...Where he was holding himself and his own stress levels hostage over it?
Miz giggled. "...well, there are some things that little sisters can't talk to brothers about~" most of which would be due to how embarrassing it would be.
Bill made a confused chittering sound. "What?! --What can't you talk about with me? I can talk about ANYTHING!" he proclaimed.
"Boys I might like?" Miz asked, just to test the waters.
"--I will analyze them for you and MAKE THEM PAY," Bill said to her promptly. "Maybe. If they deserve it and aren't 'good' enough for you. Or to you. --Which they won't be. Probably."
Wow. So this was how Pynelope felt. Miz couldn't help but laugh. "And maaaaybe~ I'd want to keep secrets so they'd be a pleasant surprise later~ who knows~" she couldn't help but tease him, he looked so serious right now.
"I don't like surprises," Bill told her, "They interrupt my plans and require replanning on-the-fly. Tell me anyway."
"I was a surprise." Miz reached her hand up to move her eyebrow again.
"You're not a surprise," Bill told her. "You are a me-that-is-also-a-me. --I would have to meet one of you eventually. How is meeting you a surprise?"
"Me being your new sister was a surprise. Wasn't it a pleasant one? I certainly liked it." Miz pointed out.
"That was a Stanley-idea; he's part of my Zodiac," Bill told her, then gave a slight grimace. "Pretty sure the stupid lizard made them so they're supposed to 'surprise' me with things -- and new ideas, and sheer and utter lunacy -- more often than I can count on them to count them out. --But yes," he told her, "I liked it. That wasn't because of Stanley, though," he told her. "That's because you are you, and my sister."
"I like pleasant surprises. Well, within reason." Miz shrugged.
"I don't like not-telling you things," Bill noted, getting back to his sister's 'threatened' 'secret-keeping', but with her apparently asking him for a 'pleasant surprise' he had to stop and rethink a few things a bit, then he hummed for a moment. "...'Pleasant surprises' are what I call gifts?" he tried after a moment, realizing that this might be some sort of definition issue again?
"That is one type." Miz considered it. "There are many types. For all situations." She was getting off topic though. "I… like telling you things, and I'm happy you like telling me things too. But sometimes there are things I don't want to tell anyone about."
"If it's not a secret, then it's just something we haven't talked about yet," Bill told her, going the route of an educated guess for that response. (Her morality was flat-ish -- more like that Stanford -- which meant he should talk with her now about how....) "Secrets have impact, they end-and-start through causality to bad-or-worse decisions by the people who don't know them; holding back knowledge can be dangerous," he told her, "But to your critical advantage. It depends on how you use it, or how and when you hold it back."
And it was at that point that Bill realized suddenly that he'd never actually had a conversation with his sister on how he usually did his own business in his 'set with anyone or anything, or anything at all to do with how he usually gained or acquired knowledge, or when or how he decided to and ever did dole it out, and to whom. She'd only seen so far how he did the things that he did with his Zodiac, primarily… but that was only a small group of people. That didn't even begin to touch upon the demons who he--
"There are things I've never told anyone. Not even to my sisters. And I'm pretty sure there're things you haven't told me, for your own reasons. And I just want to tell you that I'm okay with that."
"Well, yes," Bill said, noting her decision on the matter, and getting back to the point that he'd been trying to work up to with a bit less internal worry than before, as he shared how he felt about... "Calling 'lies of omission' a thing because you didn't talk about a thing yet is stupid, whether you're one or one trillion years old. It's just a lack of communication issue, really." And that Stanford really should just get over himself on the subject, already. "I will explain all about the dimensions and the fixing, though. When we are less rushed," he added, as he suddenly pattern-matched some of her phrasing with what she'd told him two nights ago.
"I know you will," Miz told him, trying not to get too angry about that with him again just then. Because collapsing all those dimensions was just... "But, well, what I'm saying is that sometimes, I won't be able to tell you stuff. Because I don't want you to stress out and get worried." Miz really didn't want to make him worry. It was the same reason why she hadn't told her friends about half the shit she'd been through.
"I wasn't able to tell you all the things we just talked about here, or in my own 'set, over the blog, only because of operational security; it was too dangerous," he told her, blinking as he worried that maybe she hadn't known why he'd left out so much of it. He'd sent her that one note, but… "If it's something that will 'stress me out' or 'worry me', I won't worry or stress," he told her, as he finally realized that he might have to try to directly explain how he knew he was slightly different from her in that way, in the form of giving her a different add-on layer to his earlier promise, as he explained to her that, "I'll just get mad and come over to help you break whatever you need to break, instead. ...Or meet you here, and we can talk things out," he amended next, frowning. "I don't know how much push, pull, or sway I might have in your dimension," he admitted, not really liking to admit it, but...
"Meeting and talking here would be nice." Miz blinked. "We'd be able to see each other, even when I can't go to your world for whatever reason." Then she laughed. "I'll see you in my dreams!"
Bill tilted his head at her, then smiled slightly.
"Your dreams are on the other side of that Door," he told her almost teasingly, while floating in the middle of her 'true' Dreamscape. "I can slide a 'polaroid picture' under the Door? Of me? So you can 'see' me in your dreams there?" he tried next.
Miz giggled, vibrating with a healthy glow. "I meant we can meet up here, after making plans to do so over my blog. So we can be together."
Bill let out a 'breath' again and nodded. He hadn't even considered that before, with the 'broken Bill' issue being such a problem (and her ability to move around the Doors still technically an open question until this visit). --He rather liked the idea, except… "I'll try to think of some ways to automate the capture-of-'broken Bills'-process," he told her. He also still needed to think of a way to do something to similar effect that would work for he himself to use. His sister moving her own Doors around was all well and good, but he wasn't even sure he could do that, even if he wanted to risk what that might do to her if he did it, instead of her. She had been the one to move all those dimensions around in the Reverse!Flatland dimensional set, and he hadn't really watched and gotten a good Look at what she'd been doing, let alone how she had done it; he didn't even know if he could do something like that yet. And if he started moving around Doors inside her Dreamscape like this, without knowing what he was doing, or whether he was forcing something to move that really shouldn't be forced, or moved… Well. --It was something for him to practice on and over using something else (very different than her Doors) in the meantime and in his own 'set, then, he calculated and figured.
"We'll figure it out as well go." Miz shrugged, not worrying over it. "We have time. I'm not gonna die. And neither are you."
Bill smiled. "Not again!" he told her almost chipperly. "Two times is more than enough for me, forever and forever-again."
"Same!" Miz laughed. Then she quieted. She couldn't keep stalling, and neither could he. His body was just lying there back in his own 'set right now, and somebody was going to notice if she let him keep on stalling her any longer, too.
"I'm gonna need to go now," she reminded him. "And part of me doesn't want to. Even as the other part of me does."
And with the way Bill looked frustrated all over again, she knew that he really had been stalling her on purpose, at least a little bit consciously.
"Well, the sooner you get Fister back, the sooner you can find a way to make him leave. And then I'll be able to come back," Miz added.
"I… yes," Bill said, and he stopped. He didn't say anything further.
Miz paused for a moment, then realized that she really couldn't think of anything else that she could say that was any better than what she'd already told him before. "See you soon," was the only thing she could go with.
...And now it was happening. It was really and with-finality happening. His sister was leaving him, and now Bill had to just… let her go and say… and just say...
Bill paused for a moment, thinking of what, exactly, he should say to her, about all of this, right here and now. Thinking of what Miz had said before, and now again. Thinking of how he didn't like or want to let her go; how he really didn't want her to go.
...And then something occurred to him. Something he'd seen -- well, read -- from that other dimension, something that he hadn't quite understood fully before…
...but from how his sister had said nearly the same thing as that particular person had decided to say, and the situation there, and… all of it, Bill suddenly realized that what that other person had wanted -- what Miz, having once been human also, probably wanted -- was--
"I will see you... soon, too," Bill told his sister. "I will see you again soon. I will. I will. --And you will see me again, too."
Miz gave him the slightest of eye-smiles as she listened to him and heard what he had told her, and then she turned away from him once again.
And then Miz was gone, out-and-in through her Door and it closed with a sense of locked-finality behind her.
Bill pulled in another 'deep breath' and floated there for almost a minute of timeless-time, staring, before he turned away himself to go back to his own Door.
He would go back there now. He would open that Door, and go back inside it.
Back inside his body.
Back inside the Shack.
He would send her a message on his phone to her blog, put her MizDoll up in his room, and then...
...and then he would bring 'Ford Pines back to life. He would trick that Stanford into it, letting him do it without breaking the agreement outright. And then...
And then.
And then he would see about Stanley.
And then…
...when all was said and done…
--He would finish with these things far sooner than that. And then he would have his sister back. He would. He would. He wanted his sister back, and he would have his own sister again, back. Safe and sound. Alive and well-again, and, well…
'See you later.' See you again soon.
--This wasn't 'goodbye'. This wasn't an 'I doubt I will ever see you again'. This would never be a goodbye, a giving up and accepting of fate and destiny and the 'real free will' that was such a joke here. No.
Just like that other Stanford from that other unknown dimensional set that he still hadn't traced back, separate from his one entirely, Bill knew. He knew what this was, and what it would be.
This wasn't a 'giving up' and it was not a goodbye.
--This was an 'I do not accept this, I will fix this, I will find a way to make this work, and I will defy and overcome and beat into the floor anything and everything and everyone that DARES to so much as think of attempting to stand in my way!'
Bill was going to fix this. He would bring that 'Ford back, without having to destroy or give up anything or anyone he'd been working towards over the course of his full one trillion years. He would find a way to handle things, to make things safe for his sister to be able to come stay with him again.
And then--
---